World Cup fever is a serious condition, and symptoms include a Google search history that contains questions like "Who is Curaçao’s best player?" and "Where to buy Curaçao home shirt 2026?"
If you, like me, have been afflicted by World Cup fever, then you’re going to want to stay on top of the competition closely in the coming weeks, and given how large the group stages of this particular World Cup are, that’s not going to be the easiest thing to do.
Luckily for Garmin users, an indie developer has created a free watch face that shows all the details you need at a glance, including upcoming fixtures and live scores.
The WC2026 Live Pro face from GR_apps is available for free on the Connect IQ app store, and it will be my go-to for the next few weeks on my Garmin Forerunner 970.
If you have one of the best Garmin watches and are excited about the World Cup, I heartily recommend giving it a go.
Upcoming fixtures and group standings at a glance
The top half of the watch face is devoted to showing the upcoming schedule for the World Cup, so you can see all of the day’s matches easily, with kick-off times shown in your local time zone. (If you want to know the best way to watch each game, be sure to check out Tom's Guide to the World Cup.)
Along with showing the matches with team flags, there is also information on the standings in each group, so you can see the points and goal difference for each side.
If you select a favorite team in the settings available in the Connect IQ app store, their next match will also be shown even if it’s not on that day, with a gold star to highlight it.
You can also set the always-on version of the screen to show the day’s matches and kick-off times, so you don’t even need to wake your display to see what’s coming up.
Live scores during matches
During the games themselves, the watch face will update automatically to show the minutes played and the score, so you don’t miss any goals.
I’ve been using the face before the tournament actually starts, so I can’t say how well this works yet, or indeed if it’s very taxing on the battery life of your watch, but even if it is, I’m happy to charge my Garmin a bit more regularly to keep up to date with the World Cup.
Complications to show your activity stats
The bottom half of the watch face shows the time (broken up by two soccer balls instead of standard dots, which is adorable), plus the date, temperature and two complications that you can customize in the Connect IQ app.
There’s not a lot of choice — if you normally have a very sporty watch face with stats like your weekly mileage and training readiness, you can’t do that here — but you can show your activity stats like steps and calories, or the battery life on your watch.
